Connecting with conversational marketing

Heads up — if you're not currently engaged in some form of conversational marketing, you're missing out on the powerful potential of engaging in online dialogue with your customers.

Beyond simply being the new buzzword in customer relations town, conversational marketing is the employment of social media to promote products and brands. While traditional marketing focuses on broadcasting brand awareness, conversational marketing relies on simple discussion and direct dialog to get your products well known, well thought of, and purchased.

Consider the example of one national clothing retailer who used a social media management strategy to promote its products to Generation Y. According to retail consultant Amanda Vega, the retailer contacted a group of customers in their twenties and asked whether they would like to participate in a loyalty program. This involved having the customers add the retailer to their Facebook and MySpace pages as a friend.

Twitter lets users publish "tweets," brief updates about what they are doing — or, for instance, products they have purchased.

The program worked well, but the real power of conversational marketing became clear when the retailer, due to an abnormally warm winter, had a big back stock of cashmere sweaters. To get rid of the inventory, the retailer was planning on selling the sweaters to discount outlets for $20 a piece.

Alternatively, they decided to try leveraging the 500 followers in their social network loyalty program. The retailer offered these customers a substantial discount on the sweaters, Instead of paying $168 each, they could purchase them at $30 a piece. The retailer also encouraged their 500 customers to let their followers on Twitter and Facebook know about the deal. The result? Within 24 hours, all 3,000 sweaters were sold out.

But conversational marketing is more than just a tool to push your product out to current and future buyers; it's an opportunity to listen and learn from your customer base. Customers are constantly blogging, tweeting, posting and chatting on the Web about products, brands and services. The problem is that most retailers are not taking advantage of these listening technologies. Here are some relatively easy, effective and free ways to listen in on what your customers are talking about:

• Go to search.twitter.com and type in your company name. All the various tweets (starting with the most recent) are displayed. Julio Zappata, author of "Twitter Means Business," says that this is a basic way for companies to stay on top of what their customers are saying about them. One high-level Dell executive has been known to regularly run across a tweet stating that someone is looking to buy a new computer, contact them and close the sale.
• If you're looking to see what conversations, trends or opportunities are out there that relate to your product, check out blogsearch.google.com. To see the topics people are talking about, enter the subject in the search box and see what comes up. Market Street Toffee, a retailer of hand-crafted candies, frequently checks the site for conversations relating to "corporate gift giving." By doing so, they have found numerous customers and opportunities for sales.
• To discover blogs that feature your company, product or service, or relate to your field or industry, go to technorati.com, an Internet site for searching blogs by topic. Browsing blogs (including those of competitors) is a free, open way to gain a competitive analysis about what products and services are and are not satisfying your customers' needs.

Karen Leland is the co-author of the book "Customer Service in an Instant: 60 Ways to Win Customers and Keep Them Coming Back." She is also co-founder of Sterling Consulting Group.